Dead could help the living see

CELLS that might one day cure some kinds of blindness have been staring us in the face, according to Derek van der Kooy of the University of Toronto.

“Everyone had assumed that the eye did not contain stem cells,” van der Kooy told a stem cell meeting in Melbourne, Australia. But several years ago his team found retinal stem cells in the eyes of mice.

Now the researchers have isolated them in humans, from the black ring around the iris. When these cells are injected into the eyes of baby mice, they generate all the different retinal cell types, including …

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